It was being wielded by a giant—the first giant the herdsman had ever seen. The village elders knew many tales of giants, with which they often regaled their attentive, wide-eyed children. While growing up, Ehomba and his friends had listened to fanciful fables of one-eyed giants and hunchbacked giants, of giants with teeth like barracuda and giants lacking any teeth at all who sucked up their victims through straws made of hollow tree trunks. There were giants that swam in the deep green sea (but none that flew), and giants who lived in the densest jungles and never showed themselves (but some that were too big to hide).
There were ugly giants and uglier giants, giants who cooked their victims in a casserole of palm oil and sago pastry, and giants who simply swallowed them whole. Oura had once told of a vegetarian giant, and of another who was shunned by all others of his kind for washing his hair. Sometimes there seemed to be as many different kinds of giants as there were storytellers among the Naumkib, and that meant there were a great many varieties of giant indeed.
The one that stood before them using its great hammer to demolish the village was neither as horrific in appearance as he might have been nor as good-natured. Shoulder-length red hair tumbled in tangled tresses down his back and the sides of his head. Long hairs sprouted from pointed ears that stuck through the raggedy locks, and he had orange eyes. From his splotchety, crooked nose hung a booger the size of a boulder. His teeth were surprisingly white, glaring out from the rest of a baggy visage that as a face was mostly a failure. Dark and dirty treelike arms protruded from the sleeves of a vest comprised of many sewn-together skins, not all of them overtly animal. His furry lower garments were similarly fashioned, and his sandals with their knee-high laces bespoke the crudest attempts at cobblery.